Adapters that transmit data over a network using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP)/Internet Protocol (IP) communication protocol write the packets to host memory where the packets are processed by a host system software driver. Adapters using network communication protocols other than TCP/IP may also copy inbound traffic to the host memory. Further details of the TCP/IP protocol are described in the publications “A TCP/IP Tutorial”, Request for Comment No. 1180, published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) (January 1991) and “Requirements for Internet Hosts—Communication Layers”, RFC No. 1122, published by the IETF (October 1989). Network adapters may also transmit packets using additional protocols known in the art, such as Layer 2 packets, like Ethernet & Token Ring, which encompass TCP packets. Layer II protocols are defined in IEEE 802.3, 802.5, 802.11, 802.14 Specifications. When writing the packets, the adapter places information on a packet to write to host memory in a descriptor data structure that references a host memory buffer of a fixed byte size, such as 1514 bytes, in which one packet is placed. Each received packet is written to one or more buffers in memory that is referenced by a separate descriptor. The adapter adds an updated descriptor including information on the packet in the memory buffer referenced by the descriptor to a descriptor table or array that the host software driver uses to access the packets. When the packet is in memory, the adapter hardware signals the software driver that a packet is available in memory and ready to process.